MIC

YASMINE SLIMANI MiC Senior Editor

Content warning: This article contains mention of sexual assault.

October clambers in without warning, its ostentatious display sweetened by crisp autumn air, boisterous jack-o-lanterns flashing toothy grins and ghost stories.

I’ve never experienced the supernatural: I have no sinister encounters to furtively whisper around a bonfire, no tales of messages from beyond or Ouija boards gone awry. I’ve never touched the other side, but I think I believe in ghosts. Not the kind you’re thinking of, I’m sure, but ghosts all the same.

The ghosts I’m acquainted with don’t look like the ones written in folklore. They are not disembodied figures with lifeless skin, pinned up curls and shadowy nightdresses clinging to their skeletal, evanescent frames. They lack the eeriness of empty eye sockets and mouths frozen in a permanent scream of agony, moaning in torment as they float down ornate spiral staircases. Mine take the form of moments frozen in time, so vivid I think they’re still here, but long-since dead.

They are people, places, memories, relentless in their haunting and antagonizing in their absence. They lurk patiently in every corner, begging to be remembered: in old photo albums and my childhood bedroom, in text messages and vacant corner stores, in the pages of my high school diary and the dusty frames on my nightstand. Ghosts may connote death, but it’s the living who create them. We conjure them in empty corridors and horror films. We lure them to speak to us in the sanctity of flickering candlesticks, with our hushed whispers and electronic spirit boxes. We want them to make themselves known to us, enamored by the untouchable specters we force back into existence.

I am no stranger to necromancy, to the cruel and fruitless pursuit of trying to bring things back from the dead. I long for lemures: I crack the door open for them, I leave the lights on. I am encompassed by eulogies, akin to apparitions.

I am a mosaic of ghost stories. To tell them is to keep them alive. ———

The Graveyard

I drive back to the town I’m from and think I’ve never seen a graveyard look so much like home.

The roads are familiar but uncanny, reeking with the putridness of a past life. I was born and raised here: I’ve kissed every corner, caressed every crack in the concrete, so why do I feel like a tourist? I don’t recognize the new shop by my high school. The city has cut down the towering oak tree in front of my house and nobody cared to invite me to the wake. I am sick with unrest, like an anguished Victorian spirit discovering that the sanctuary wherein he lived and loved had been bulldozed and replaced, that nobody remembered him at all. I drive the same car but it feels like a casket now, a cold metal vessel transporting me through a world that’s since moved on without me. I’m pale with the bone-chilling premonition that things have died here.

I realize I’ve died here too, a hundred times over. So many little versions of me have faded away, leaving sepia-toned remnants in their wake. Old flames, friends, feelings and fleeting memories, all faceless ghosts now marking this place as a land of no return. I wonder if my presence sends a chill down the locals’ spines, if they know someone that no longer belongs here has tried to communicate from the other side.

I try to rouse these things back to life. I perform seances in the parking structure I used to frequent with people who dare not speak of my existence. I watch in solitude as the sunset, red as inferno, sets the town ablaze. I think about how so much has changed here, that I’ve changed too. But I find solace in knowing that one November evening, we drove up to the top of the parking structure and used our car keys to carve our names into the wall. I’m grateful for the etchings that outlived us, the irrevocable proof that once, I was here.

Kyra tells me to hold my breath when we drive past a cemetery. Superstition warns that the restless spirits will enter your soul and nestle into your bones. With no home to return to, they anxiously await a gust of air from unassuming lungs that they can get swept up in, longing to take the life that courses through your veins and make it their own. I don’t blame them, but we selfishly puff up our cheeks and sit in silence anyways. Kyra steps on the gas so we don’t suffocate. We turn the corner and breathe out a sigh of relief in unison.

I pull out of the driveway of my home and make the trip back to school. I hold my breath. I’m blue in the face the entire way there.

___

Pretty Dead Things

My body feels like a graveyard, too.

Because my body, it’s a mess of limbs and appendages, of flesh and regret. Sometimes it feels like a thing I haunt, a land that is no longer mine. To be so disjointed in the skin that was painstakingly designed for you feels blasphemous, but each movement is exorcised out of me, like I’m rattling my putrefying bones from the inside trying to coax out some evil sickness.

I remember the graverobbers that visited my body, their greedy hands digging and clutching and taking, always taking. They were insatiable in their taking, and their hunger raised a mind-splitting ring in their ears that stopped them from hearing me protest and plead and persist that this body is mine, not theirs. Not that it matters: dead girls can’t say no.

It feels like watching from the other side, suspended in the leaden grey of compulsory silence. Like a spirit that doesn’t know it’s passed on, screaming until her throat is raw, wondering why nobody can hear her. But I watched as they made a grave of me, something so alive, with teeth and hair and blood and fight left in me, still.

I mourn the girl that I was before you touched me. I bring her flowers on Sundays. I make her headstone beautiful, wondering if dead things can be pretty, too.

I scrub and shine until my knuckles bleed.

Can dead things be pretty, too?

__

Are you a ghost, too?

Last year, I asked a boy if he’d ever felt like a ghost.

He wanted me to elaborate and I was rendered speechless, that inexplicable shame boiling inside of me and clawing its way up my throat like bile. How do I say that I feel like a stranger in my own body, watching my life unfold from some hazy netherworld? Like a tortured soul condemned from their house of bones and forced to observe in paralyzed purgatory? I tried to articulate the placelessness, the drifting, the amorphousness of it all, but the words are all clatter and chaos and confusion. My abstruse existential question ultimately falls flat, and he says he hasn’t.

The boy relayed my question to his roommate later that night. His roommate responded with expected indifference, rolling his eyes and asking what the hell that even means. He called me pretentious, said it’s ‘not that serious’ and I nodded my head so hard that my papier-mâché bones clattered against each other in frenzied discordance.

“It’s not that serious,” I echoed. I want nothing more than to believe it.

When I was eight, I read about the girl with the green ribbon. Jenny kept the enigmatic bow laced around her neck, unrelenting as a promise. In her final moments, she allows her lover to untie it, and her head disconnects from her neck, rolling onto the floor in a discarded heap of skull and hair, long and black like my own. I think she looks like me. I am a mess of knots, more green ribbon than girl. I’ve spent years begging people not to touch the tangles.

I think I’ve always felt that way — like if someone tugs at me just right, I’ll fall apart entirely.

__

Birds & Banshees

I visit home again despite my apprehension.

Because when the unspeakable becomes reality, when you’re ghostlike and translucent and begging to be grounded by some sort of familiarity, you go home.

I drive to my favorite park and settle down at the top of the hill alone, brushing shoulders with my grief, thinking about the house with one less heart beating between its walls. I want nothing more than to be left alone, to remain ensnared by the frothing, sharp fangs of hurt.

But a man named Nick walks up to me, oblivious to my staccato of sniffles and sobs, and tells me he’s an ornithologist: he studies birds, memorizes their flight patterns and mating calls and physical characteristics. He possesses an unplaceable warmth, and I’m almost annoyed by the way my sluggishness subsides as he lets me sift through his leatherbound notebook. It’s overflowing with hand-drawn Midwestern fowl, and I sit in silence while he clumsily explains how to distinguish between their feather tracts and beak curvatures.

He shares his favorite type of bird, rattling off some complicated name I don’t quite remember. They’re difficult to find in the Midwest these days, already on their migration away from the bitter winter. He’s never seen one, but he found one of their vacant nests during his hike through the park, still miraculously intact and perched in the crook of a tree branch overhead. He flashes me a lottery-winning grin, telling me how lucky he is to have found it, how beautiful it is that they were ever here at all.

I find a video in my camera roll, and it takes me weeks to watch. When I finally succumb, music blares from my speakers so loud it launches my heartbeat out of sync. You’re swaying

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your hips and bellowing a triumphant zalghout in our family’s living room. I remember that day, how you tied a scarf around my waist and forced me to dance. My body is rigid and obstinate and not built for dancing. But you make it look as easy as breathing, and we share the same blood, so I do. I zalghout the way you taught me to when I was younger, when you and I roared ferociously in the kitchen until I got it just right, two unknowing banshees. You’re weightless, smiling and iridescent and so alive, waving your arms like wings outstretched in flight.

How beautiful is it that you were ever here at all?

__

It’s an undeniably human feat to believe in ghosts. Our illusory stories are fostered by the faith we have in things now vanished, in our inexorable trust that they are still with us. That our loved ones will visit with outstretched hands, that they’re sitting on the L-shaped couch that still bears the indents their bodies forged after years of use. That things like love and friendship and memory persist beyond the grave, beyond the metaphysical constraints of life and death, past and present. We welcome the visitations, leaving a seat open at the Thanksgiving table, letting the photos stay encased in the frames. We love the things that haunt us, and that love keeps them alive.

I love the things that haunt me, even when their visits spur night terrors and fever chills and body aches. I love them enough to retire the ghost hunting. I decide to stop driving aimlessly through my hometown searching for some semblance of what it used to be, of who I was when it was mine. To stop yearning for the versions of me that were once untouched and untarnished, to stop believing that I deserve to be here any less than they did. The things we’ve lost are not always ghosts or graveyards. Sometimes, they’re glorious reminders that we loved something enough to miss it, to keep it alive forever, to continue basking in growth and newness even in its absence.

I visit the unmarked grave of the things I’ve loved that are no longer here, and I leave yellow sunflowers. I mourn and I grieve, but I do not claw at the dirt, do not interrupt the blooming that is emerging in the wake of the loss. Instead, I thank them for their time and let them rest. Just as we must remember to hold onto these things, we must know when to let them go.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Ghost hunting in Ann Arbor

SAARTHAK JOHRI MiC Columnist

Ghosts are real. Maybe not in the ways you’ve heard, but I assure you, they’re very real. I’ve seen ghosts nearly everywhere in my hometown all my life — in every corner of my house, in every school I’ve attended, in every nook and cranny of my neighborhood. Every so often, I take it upon myself to collect these ghosts from their spots — not with a positron pack or vacuums or exorcist tools, per se, but to simply visit them and ask them to come along with me. It’s not so hard when you’ve been doing it for as long as I have. You just have to know the exact right thing to say.

Throughout my time in Ann Arbor, I’ve spotted three such ghosts. In my hometown, I have my car, which makes it easier to get to every haunted spot, but it isn’t here. I do have a bike. It’s no ECTO-1, but it’d have to do. I slipped on my New Balances and jogged down the apartment stairs while plotting my round trip on Google Maps. This method of ghost hunting might seem mundane, but trust me when I say these are the best tools for the job. Like I said, I’ve been doing this for a while. As the sun sets, I set out too.

The ride didn’t take much exertion. I rolled down Plymouth Road, conserving my momentum for the changes in slope and switching to the bike lane when I could. The bridge over the Huron River was another small challenge in elevation, but nothing would stand between me and my ghosts that night. Navigating through Kerrytown until I reached the border of downtown Ann Arbor, I saw my first spot. The mostly white, slightly color-sprinkled tiles of the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum shone in the distance. I kept biking. I was looking past, checking the windows on the brick backing of the building. It was after hours, so there shouldn’t be anyone in there except my target. A wispy motion caught my eye as I braked hard, gazing at what I found.

This one was just a kid, barely older than a toddler. Neatly combed, straight hair fell across his forehead as he stood still, staring at me in his tiny overalls. He looked like he was on the edge of crying as his eyes darted, taking in his surroundings and me. I also looked around, debating whether I cared enough to be seen in public talking to air. Placing my hand on the glass, I prepared myself to speak, practicing the words in my head very carefully as to get this right.

“Hey, everything’s going to be alright — I think you’re ready to go home. Could you come with me?”

Slowly but surely, the kid’s quivering lip steadied. His eyes focused on me and then wrinkled as he broke out into a wide, toothy smile. He phased through the closed window and into me. I felt the small weight of the spirit settle onto mine and figured it was light enough to keep biking. Moving towards State Street and taking a right to continue towards campus, I felt the inevitability of what this ghost would have progressed toward if he had continued. That smile would lessen over the years as he found fewer things to grin about, his teeth disappearing into a flat curved line. My next stop was the Law Quad.

In the very center was what looked to be a teenager. Dressed in a simple T-shirt and shorts, his short hair stood in shock, with the very ends curling off. His mouth was closed firm, but his eyes revealed that he was keeping his jaw from dropping. Rotating and taking in the sights of the surrounding buildings, he didn’t see me until I was right in front of him. No longer caring what the students relaxing in the grassy fields saw, I said my piece, point-blank.

“When you work for it, you’ll belong here — but you’ll learn to value the time you’re not working, as well. I can prove it if you come with me.”

Lowering his eyes to meet mine, he gave me a nervous half-smile and joined me as well. Feeling the two souls meet each other on my own, I figured I had just enough stamina to return home. My apartment was where the third ghost was, but I figured I should gather these two first. I caught the TheRide bus back to my apartment, locked my bike, took the elevator and walked back into my home.

Sitting on the couch was the last ghost. Their hair fell in shaggy curls that I could tell still weren’t long enough to tie up. I couldn’t make out their face as they leaned over on the couch with their head in their hands. Oddly enough, they were completely still. No sobs shaking their shoulders, just still hands gripping their face. I could only tell that this was someone that had lived by the memory of breaths ever-so-slightly shifting their body. Taking a second to swallow, I gently sat down next to them. I picked my words carefully — knowing what I had to say would be much more intricate than the other two ghosts —- to be the exact right thing.

“I know it’s quiet. It’s completely silent in what’s supposed to be your home, and it will stay that way if you want, for the first time in your life. And I know a part of you loves this quiet, and a part of you hates that you love it. You hate that you’re so glad to be away for a bit, and you love that you finally get to be. I’m here to tell you that you’ll come to miss the noise. Then, you’ll go home and miss the quiet. You’re allowed to miss both. You’re allowed to love and hate this.”

They slowly removed their head from their hands and sat up to meet my eyes. I smiled, looking at my ghostly reflection from over a year ago. Slowly, they broke out into a smile, one they’ve been practicing to be as big as they feel, toothily affirming their journey. I took their hand, and we went to my bedroom, where I released the other two ghosts. They all stared at each other in recognition and looked all over my bedroom, filled with every trinket, poster and picture to affirm my identity. The kid looked around in awe, gasping in delight at the children’s novels I keep on my bookshelf and my Spider-Man posters. The teenager looked out the window, out towards the campus and the city, his smile slowly becoming whole. The oldest took in every part of the room they had first seen bare. The three began to wind down, and then they all faced me before rejoining my soul, restoring it.

Ghosts are real. Before in-person classes started, I’d been in Ann Arbor at three points in my life: moving in during the summer before, my campus tour and a visit to the Hands-On Museum I’d forgotten about. They’re all places where I made the decision to become a different person three different times: the young adult who had to leave behind their past immaturity to live alone and establish his identity, the teenager who knew where he needed to go to college and had to leave behind his past childishness and the kid who went to a children’s museum with his family but was never remembered by his older selves, only recognized. My soul split as I forced these different versions out of me. I see ghosts nearly everywhere in my hometown, in every place I’ve become a different person. Every so often, I take it upon myself to collect these ghosts from these spots, driving around to the places I used to haunt to restore my soul, to move forward with every version of myself. It used to be so difficult to return to them, but I’ve been doing it for a long time. You just have to know the exact right thing to say — what I wish someone would have told me at those times.